What I'm reading

A couple of weeks ago, I picked up a book from my Playgroup's resource library - Mothers raising sons, written by Nigel Latta. Nigel Latta is the kiwi equivelant of Steve Biddulph. I've just finished reading it.

In the first half of the book he basically argues that a lot of common generalisations about boys that are supported by 'research' are either totally blown out of proportion or completely untrue (a couple of those generalisations about the differences between boys and girls are actually based on a study done on some beetles!). So he wades through a lot of the common things we here about boys and takes you through the research and what is fact and what is hype.

The second half of the book has more practical stuff about strategies for dealing with boys at different ages, school, etc.

What I really like about the book was the facts he gave about boys that just reminded me a lot of the stuff Ben does/how he behaves is normal 'boy' stuff. And that it is ok that it sometimes might feel annoying for me. It is also helpful to have this information to be able to make decisions on which battles are worth fighting and which are just differences of opinion. It also gave some general guidelines about navigating boys at different ages - not a tick box style 'do this, do that' but more general goals that look at the bigger picture of raising boys, so you don't get stuck in the nitty gritty details.

I'm looking at buying a copy of this book for myself now - I think it would be helpful to refer to, to remind me that my boy is a 'boy' and the commonalities we have are greater than the differences.